Mom Blames “Intelligence Levels” On Daughter Ending A Friendship & Reddit Is Livid

Middle school is so often a time of shifting friendships. Kids who have played together since kindergarten can suddenly grow apart for a whole host of reasons. Their interests might change, they might be in different classrooms or even different schools. It happens, and of course it’s tough for kids to understand. It does not need to be made any tougher by moms who step in and give unkind reasons for why their kids’ friendships might have ended. Like heavily insinuating their child is more intelligent than their former friend, as one mom on Reddit confessed, for instance.

The in question mom took to Reddit’s Am I The A***hole forum to share a recent interaction she had with a fellow mom. The poster explained that her daughter “Sophie” used to be best friends with a girl she called “Kat,” but has since been growing away from that friendship. Which seemed to happen once they got to middle school, where students were split into groups that are apparently called “advanced” and “normal” in subjects like math and science. (Side note: I really hope that’s not what these groups are called.)

“There have been multiple group projects and kids get to pick their partners,” the mom wrote on Reddit. “Kat and Sophie usually work together, and that is when issues start happening. Sophie would get really frustrated that the work Kat did wasn’t correct. I told her to just turn it in without fixing it and she got a bad grade on that assignment. After that Sophie went through a period of time fixing stuff after a while I told her to stop doing group projects with her. So they stopped doing projects together and the friendship blew up.”

When it was time for Sophie to invite friends to her birthday party and Kat wasn’t included, Kat’s mom called to ask why. “I said it was due to both girls intelligence levels, and tried explaining the group project issue,” she wrote, and seemed shocked that the mother was offended. So now she’s asking Reddit if she was in the wrong.

It will probably surprise no one other than the original poster to find that people did, indeed, think she was in the wrong for implying a child was not intelligent enough to be friends with her daughter.

“You totally called her kid dumb without calling her kid dumb. All you had to do was say as far as you know they aren’t really friends anymore that they started having a downfall over group projects and have just drifted apart,” wrote one person.”

Another added that she could have “said the kids had drifted apart. I think she enjoyed telling the other mom that her kid wasn’t as smart as hers and now she seems shocked that the mom is offended.”

The general consensus appeared to be that she could have said pretty much anything else in an effort to be kind and tactful. “As a parent. You just say they grow a part which is totally normal for kids to grow a part during puberty,” another wrote.

It’s difficult enough for kids to deal with the emotional upheaval of changing friendships without someone’s mom implying they’re not intelligent. Talk about a bad look.